Everything Belongs to Us by Yoojin Grace Wuertz

At the start of the year, I mentioned that one of my blogging goals was to read more diverse books. Set in South Korea in 1978, Everything Belongs to Us is the first diverse book I’ve read this year.

When We Go Missing by Kristen Twardowski

Reading the blurb was enough to sell me on this book. I have long been fascinated (and disturbed) by the ease with which husbands were once able to commit their (sane) wives to insane asylums, so that angle of the story definitely got my attention and made me eager to read this novel.

The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers

Inspired by a true incident, this saga unfolds with gripping intensity, conjuring the era with uncanny immediacy. Amid the desperation of wartime, Placidia sees the social order of her Southern homeland unravel. As she comes to understand how her own history is linked to one runaway slave, her perspective on race and family are upended. A love story, a story of racial divide, and a story of the South as it fell in the war, The Second Mrs. Hockaday reveals how this generation–and the next–began to see their world anew.

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris

It’s almost impossible for me to believe this is  a debut novel. If I didn’t know better, I would have assumed B.A. Paris to be an established, seasoned writer with at least a dozen novels previously published. (Novels I would have been feverishly hunting down so I could read them as soon as possible!) And yet… it is a debut novel. Wow.

Le Chateau by Sarah Ridout

Imagine having a terrible accident that leaves you with amnesia and wipes out memories of the last five years of your life. Your husband is a stranger, you don’t remember giving birth to your daughter, your home is an immense chateau in France that’s more than a little creepy that your family shares with your mysterious mother-in-law. This is Charlotte de Chastenet’s reality. Her husband, Henri, longs for her memory to be restored, but Charlotte suspects he is hiding things from her. Madame, as her mother-in-law is called, insinuates Charlotte had an affair with a neighbor, but rather than being upset about it, she often encourages Charlotte to go see the man. Her daughter, Ada, is sweet and happy to her mother home again, but she is sad and hurt when she notices Charlotte’s lack of memory about her—making Charlotte feel guilt on top of everything else.